Onsite Manufacturing Photo Shoot and Clipping Out

Mark Kelly is an experienced sheep farmer and electrician. Frustrated by the expense and labours of dipping his sheep he constructed a Heath Robinson solution using an old oil tank and scrap parts. Mark found his system safe, efficient and easy to use and so successful was this prototype in treating his own sheep that he soon found it was attracting the interest of neighbouring farmers who were interested in the system for treating their own sheep.

The Dipfast showering system was readied for market by 2017 after a three-year R&D process working closely with Harlequin Plastics. The photo shoot required a number of shots to illustrate the various configurations of the system. We manoeuvred the equipment against a blank wall and bracketed for even exposure and were grateful for occluded skies and flat light.

The clipping process was very labor intensive but the clipped out images gave the designers enormous graphic flexibility for the brochure layout.

Studio Product / Flyer Design

Usel have been on the go since the sixties. Their factory floor is ever agile and one interesting arm of the industrial sewing section produces bespoke accessories for blue light services. The designers work closely with ambulance crews and police units to create items that are clever, efficient and entirely fit for purpose.

The trick with room set photography and mattresses in particular is to make an empty space look like a room without looking like a room. Dressers are slid in at unusual angles, improbable plants and impractical lamps are mixed and matched whilst chins are scratched. These sorts of shoots are always a team effort and the simple end result takes a lot of sweat to get there. This shoot for Usel was in their new light-filled showroom. At one point I sped across town and raided my house for all the plants and cushions I could put my hands on.

Made in Belfast. Since 1962. The Vintage Satchel Company has been stitching satchels in Belfast for over fifty years and they're still at it. They use ethically sourced sustainable leather in their Belfast factory, procured from one of the few remaining tanneries in the UK. The traditional school bag has found new expression in it's boxy shape with funky colours, chunky stitching and that first-day-at-school leather smell. Rows of them trooped into the studio to be shot recently and every handle had to be slunk around or hung down on fishing wire just so. Plenty of photoshopping later and the clipped-out png files were ready to be dropped on top of whatever. I've used some colour-block backgrounds here to show off the job that was in it.

Aerotank

More large shiny objects. Aerotank manufacture a innovative sewage product for domestic and argri sectors. The Clearhill machines in the previous post were shot in a warehouse and this gave me a little more control over the light. This shoot however was outdoors, which was problematic as we were shooting a large glossy box. A lot of the reflections simply had to be cleaned up in Photoshop. The final shots were clipped out for dropping onto various backgrounds. Background sample courtesy Freepix.